Apple's 'Everyone Can Code' initiative expands to colleges and universities outside of the US

Apple is taking its coding course international after it announced that 20 college and university partners worldwide will begin offering the Everyone Can Code initiative to students.

Apple is taking its coding course international after it announced that 20 college and university partners worldwide will begin offering the Everyone Can Code initiative to students.

Initially limited to the U.S., the course is designed by Apple engineers and educators to help students learn the basics to get into the "booming app economy" -- Apple says iOS developers alone have earned $70 billion in the last decade. The program itself is focused on Apple's Swift programming language and aimed at high-school and college-stage students, and beyond.

Australia's RMIT is the lead partner joining the program. It plans to offer the year-long course through its online service as well as a vocational class on its Melbourne campus. Beyond that, RMIT will offer scholarships for teachers who want to take the course and a free summer school that is designed for secondary students to get into coding.

Other partners joining include Mercantec in Denmark, Hogeschool van Arnhem en Nijmegen in the Netherlands, Unitec Institute of Technology in New Zealand and Plymouth University in the UK.

"We launched the Everyone Can Code initiative less than a year ago with the ambitious goal of offering instruction in coding to as many people as possible. Our program has been incredibly popular among US schools and colleges, and today marks an important step forward as we expand internationally," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement.